Much of this tutorial - initially inspired by this thread - was adapted directly from the ISBoxer wiki and the RIFT quickstart video posted by Lax. If you're lost after using those resources, this tutorial might help. I've added screenshots for basically every step and tacked on some extra information that should be helpful in getting a 5 character Rift group started.

While everything in this tutorial should work just fine, I am far from an expert in either Rift or ISBoxer. I'm still quite happy to help as much as I can with questions about the game or more complicated multiboxing options – just post in the thread (note as of April 2014 - I haven't played RIFT in a couple months, so I probably can't help with any changes that are the result of patches/updates to RIFT or ISBoxer. I'm still around playing EVE though!).

Step 1: Launch Rift and log in to each of your characters, then log back out. This step is mainly to make sure the client works before you do anything with ISBoxer.

Step 2: Launch Innerspace.

Step 3: Add Rift to Innerspace by right-clicking on the Innerspace taskbar icon and selecting Add Game. For Name, you probably want RIFT. For game executable, you want to select your riftpatchlive.exe file (mine was located at C:\Program Files (x86)\RIFT\riftpatchlive.exe). You can leave Parameters blank. Then click OK.

If you have done this step successfully, you should be able to right-click on the Innerspace taskbar icon and see RIFT (or whatever you entered as the name).

Step 4: Launch the ISBoxer Toolkit.

Step 5: In the ISBoxer Toolkit, go to Wizards – Quick Setup Wizard.

Step 6: Select Rift from the dropdown menu, then click Next.

Step 7: Add your characters in the order they will appear in your group, then click Next.

Step 8: Enter a name for your team, then click Next.

Step 9: Enter a window layout. You can change this later and customize it as much as you want. To start with, I prefer one big window, a bunch of small ones below it, and space for the taskbar.

Step 10: I am not going to try to explain what is going on here, just use the default.

Step 11: Set up your controls. These are the buttons you will press for some basic things like follow, assist, interact, and toggle broadcast mode. For this tutorial we are also unchecking the box at the bottom of the screen that sets up a click bar for you.

Step 12: Click on the Game Key Bindings tab, then click on Auto-Fill. This sets up the keys necessary for ISBoxer to send commands to your party properly, based on the way Rift orders the group on the UI. You also need to enter something for the Follow Target and Interact with Target fields.

Step 13: Click on Finish. You're done with the wizard! Now all you need to do is hit Control-E or go to File – Export All to Inner Space. You need to do this every time you make changes in the ISBoxer Toolkit!

Step 14: Right click on the Innerspace taskbar icon, then select ISBoxer Character Sets, then select 5x Rift Tutorial (or whatever you named it). The Rift launcher should appear. Once you've logged in and clicked the Play button, the launcher will close, a game window will open, and a new launcher will appear. Keep at it until all your characters are logged in. If you don't end up with five windows, just select your character set again and Innerspace will start launching any missing windows. You can also launch individual windows, if you'd like. Make sure you log in to your characters in the correct order! In this case, I am logging in as Warrior in the first launcher, then Rogue1 in the second launcher, Rogue2 in the third launcher, Mage in the fourth launcher, and Cleric in the fifth launcher. They will be invited into the group in the same order.

Step 15: Move the icon in the top left corner of the screen. First, hit control-alt-shift-G to make the ISBoxer Control Panel appear. Second, drag the icon to the top middle of the screen (it is out of the way of most game elements in this location). This icon shows you if your key maps are enabled or not (on the left side, you usually want them enabled) and if your mouse broadcasting is enabled (on the right side, you usually want it disabled). Third, click on Sync Visible Menu Positions. Fourth, click on Save All Menu Positions. Then hit control-alt-shift-G again to make the ISBoxer Control Panel disappear.

Step 16: Create your characters, if you haven't already, and enter the game world on all five of the accounts. For the lazy among you, this is where you can test out your first keybinding! Press the “Toggle Broadcast Mode” button from Step 11, and you'll see a mouse cursor appear in all of the screens. Click on the play button in your main window, and everyone will log in at the same time. Press the button again to turn broadcasting back off, because although you'll use it a lot you don't generally want to leave it on. Clicks saved: 2!

You may need to turn down your graphics settings on all of you windows, or perhaps all of them except the main window (Warrior, in my case). For the lowest possible settings, go to settings / video / advanced, move all of the sliders to the left, click the checkbox for low quality renderer, and restart the game. I highly, highly recommend doing this for all but your main window, your FPS will be dramatically improved.

Step 17: With mouse broadcasting enabled, open up your settings on all of your characters and make a couple changes. In the interface / combat tab, enable smart target, show target of target, and cast on target's target. This is so your heals hit your tank, or your DPS/healer if you suck at tanking (the downside of multiboxing is that you can't blame someone else for being a bad tank ). In the interface / action bar tab, give yourself four bottom action bars and one side action bar. This is just so your screen in-game looks like my screenshots; you can always change it later.

Step 18: With mouse broadcasting enabled, open up the macro menu on all of your characters. Create a macro named Follow with the text “follow”. Create a macro named Interact with the text “interact”. Put both of these on the side action bar.

Step 19: With mouse broadcasting enabled, open up the Keybindings menu on all of your characters. Hover over the action bar and press a key or combination of keys to bind them to an action bar slot. In this case, we're binding the two slots occupied by our follow and interact macros to the keys we set back in step 12. That's shift-alt-1 for follow and shift-alt-2 for interact.

Step 20: Invite everyone to your group, in the correct order, and test out your new macros!

If you press Alt-A, your characters should assist whichever character currently occupies the main window.If you press Alt-S, your characters should interact with whatever they have targeted.If you press alt-D, your characters should follow whichever character currently occupies the main window.

Last edited by Jeran on Mon Jun 17, 2013 9:12 am, edited 5 times in total.

We are going to make six key maps:RIFT Virtual Combat will act as a template that will automatically be replaced by character-specific keymaps whenever a command is sent.RIFT Combat Hotkeys will take a command from your keyboard – 1, 2, or 3 in this tutorial – and tell ISBoxer which rotation you want to do.RIFT Warrior will contain the warrior rotations.RIFT Rogue will contain the rogue rotations.RIFT Mage will contain the mage rotations.RIFT Cleric will contain the cleric rotations.

Step 1: Open the ISBoxer Toolkit. In the top left window, right click on Key Maps and select New Key Map. Name the new key map “RIFT Virtual Combat”.

Step 2: In the bottom left window, right click on Mapped Keys and select New Mapped Key. Name it “1: Pull”. Repeat this process until you have a mapped key for 1: Pull, 2: DPS, and 3: Heal. You can add more later, but these are all we'll be using for now.

Step 3: In the top left window, right click on Virtual Combat and and select Make Copy. Rename the “Copy of RIFT Virtual Combat” to “RIFT Combat Hotkeys”.

Step 4: In the top left window, select RIFT Combat Hotkeys. In the bottom left window, select 1: Pull. In the bottom right window, set the hotkey to 1 (the keyboard 1, not the numpad 1). Repeat, setting DPS to 2 and Heal to 3.

Step 5: In the bottom left window, expand 1: Pull and select the 1 below Steps. In the bottom right window, right click on Actions and select Key Mapped Actions > New Do Mapped Key Action. For Target, select Window:All w/Current. For Key Map, select RIFT Virtual Combat. For Mapped Key, select 1: Pull. Repeat, except using 2: DPS and 3: Heal for the Mapped Key. Whenever you press 1, 2, or 3 on your keyboard, ISBoxer will tell each of your characters to do the respective rotation in their virtual combat key map. At the moment, this does not do anything, but in a couple more steps we'll replace Virtual Combat with a class-specific key map and then magic will happen.

Step 6: In the bottom left window, expand 1: Pull and select the 1 below Steps. In the bottom right window, right click on Actions and select Key Mapped Actions > New Do Mapped Key Action. For Target, select Window:Current. For Key Map, select Non-combat. For Mapped Key, select Assist Me. In the bottom right window, right click on Do Assist Me in Non-combat Key Map → self and move it up to the top of the list. Repeat for 2: DPS and 3: Heal. You can copy and paste the action if you're lazy / efficient. This is an auto-assist macro that makes sure all your characters are shooting at the same target. Because we changed some options in Part 2, Step 17, it also means that spells will automatically be cast upon an appropriate target, either the enemy or whoever the enemy has targeted.

Step 7: In the top left window, right click RIFT Virtual Combat and make four copies. Rename them “RIFT Warrior”, “RIFT Rogue”, “RIFT Mage”, and “RIFT Cleric”.

Step 8: In the top left window, select RIFT Warrior. In the bottom left window, expand 1:Pull and select 1. In the bottom right window, right click on Actions and select Keystroke Action > New Keystroke Action. For Target, select Window:Current. For Key Combination, press Numpad 1. Repeat for RIFT Rogue, RIFT Mage, and RIFT Cleric. You can copy and paste the action if you're lazy / efficient.

Step 9: In the top left window, select RIFT Warrior. In the bottom left window, expand 2:DPS. Right click on Steps and select New Step until you have 4 blank steps. Rename the first three steps “Builder” and the last step “Finisher”. Then select the first step (now named Builder). In the bottom right window, right click on Actions and select Keystroke Actions → New Keystroke Action. For Target, select Window:Current. For Key Combination, press Numpad 2. Then click the checkboxes for “Do not advance to the next step” and “… for at least” and set the timer to 1.6 seconds. The RIFT Warrior has a 1.5 second global cooldown after all abilities, and this timer prevents . Repeat for the other two Builders (for now, they will all be identical). For the Finisher, use Numpad 3 for the Key Combination. Then copy and paste these steps into 3:Heal. Your Warrior doesn't have a healing ability, so he won't do anything differently during the healing rotation.

Step 10: In the top left window, select RIFT Rogue. In the bottom left window, expand 2:DPS. Right click on Steps and select New Step until you have 6 blank steps. Rename the first five steps “Builder” and the last step “Finisher”. Then select the first step (now named Builder). In the bottom right window, right click on Actions and select Keystroke Actions → New Keystroke Action. For Target, select Window:Current. For Key Combination, press Numpad 2. Then click the checkboxes for “Do not advance to the next step” and “… for at least” and set the timer to 1.1 seconds. The RIFT Warrior has a 1.0 second global cooldown after all abilities, and this timer prevents you from moving to the next step until your character is ready. Repeat for the other four Builders (for now, they will all be identical). For the Finisher, use Numpad 3 for the Key Combination. Then copy and paste these steps into 3:Heal. Your Rogues don't have a healing ability, so they won't do anything differently during the healing rotation.

Step 11: In the top left window, select RIFT Mage. In the bottom left window, expand 2:DPS. Select the first, blank step. In the bottom right window, right click on Actions and select Keystroke Actions → New Keystroke Action. For Target, select Window:Current. For Key Combination, press Numpad 2. Since you only have one step, you don't need to create a pause between steps. Then copy and paste this step into 3:Heal. Your Mage doesn't have a healing ability yet, so they won't do anything differently during the healing rotation.

Step 12: In the top left window, select RIFT Cleric. In the bottom left window, expand 2:DPS. Select the first, blank step. In the bottom right window, right click on Actions and select Keystroke Actions → New Keystroke Action. For Target, select Window:Current. For Key Combination, press Numpad 2. Since you only have one step, you don't need to create a pause between steps. Repeat for 3:Heal, except using Numpad 3 as the key combination.

Step 13: In the top left window, select your character set. Drag the RIFT Virtual Combat and RIFT Combat Hotkeys from the top left window to the bottom left window.

Step 14: In the top left window, select the RIFT Warrior key map. Then drag your warrior characters from the top left window to the bottom left window. Repeat for your rogues, mages, and clerics as appropriate.

Step 15: In the top left window, select your first character. In the bottom right window, select the Virtual Mapped Keys tab. For the entry on the left, select RIFT Virtual Combat for Key Map and leave Mapped Key blank. For the entry on the right, select RIFT Warrior for Key Map and leave Mapped Key blank. Repeat for your rogues, mages, and clerics as appropriate.

Step 16: Export to Innerspace and launch your team.

Last edited by Jeran on Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:35 am, edited 1 time in total.

Step 2: With mouse broadcasting enabled, open up the Keybindings menu on all of your characters. Bind Numpad 1 through 9 (plus – and +) to the first action bar. Then do Control-Numpad 1 through 9 (plus – and +) to the second action bar. Then do Alt-Numpad 1 through 9 (plus – and +) to the third action bar. Then do Control-Alt-Numpad 1 through 9 (plus – and +) to the fourth action bar. This gives you lots of key bindings to work with whenever you start customizing your rotations.

YOU NEED TO MAKE SURE THAT KEYBOARD NUMBERS 1 THROUGH = ARE NOT ASSIGNED TO ANYTHING. You're going to be spamming these keys and ISBoxer is going to be sending different key presses to your different clients. If 1 through = are also bound to abilities, chaos will ensue and everything will break. If at some point you want to actually type a number into the game, either use the numpad (abilities won't activate while text is open) or deactivate key bindings using that toggle in the top middle of your screen or by hitting shift-alt-M.

Step 3: On your warrior, create 3 macros. The first will be called Pull. The second will be called Build. The third will be called Finish. As a level 2 Reaver / Warlord / Void Knight, you'll use the following commands inside each macro:

Pull:cast Sergeant's Ordercast Soul Sickness

Build: cast Soul Sicknesscast Ravaging Strike

Finish:cast Dire Blow

These are very simply macros that try to cast the first spell and, if they cannot, cast the second ability instead. The Finish macro isn't actually needed yet, but eventually you'll get finishers with cooldowns (Dire Corruption) that you'll place at the top of this macro. When your macros are done, place them on your first action bar with Pull in the first spot (bound to Numpad 1), Build in the second spot (bound to Numpad 2), and Finish in the third spot (bound to Numpad 3). I like putting the abilities used in the macros in the ability bars above the macro, so I can see that they've been activated and, for those with a cooldown, how long until they can be activated again.

Step 4: On your rogue(s), create 3 macros. The first will be called Pull. The second will be called Build. The third will be called Finish. As a level 2 Marksman / Ranger / Assassin, you'll use the following commands inside each macro:

Pull:cast Swift Shot

Build: cast Swift Shot

Finish:cast Hasted Shot

None of these macros are actually necessary at this point – you could just put the ability itself onto the first action bar - but eventually you'll get better abilities or abilities with cooldowns that you might want to put into the Pull macro (such as Barbed Shot or Splinter Shot), Build macro (Empowered Shot), or Finish macro (Deadeye Shot, Rapid Fire Shot). When your macros are done, place them on your first action bar with Pull in the first spot (bound to Numpad 1), Build in the second spot (bound to Numpad 2), and Finish in the third spot (bound to Numpad 3).

Step 5: On your mage, create 3 macros. The first will be called Pull. The second will be called DPS. The third will be called Heal. As a level 1 Chloromancer / Pyromancer / Elementalist, you'll use the following commands inside each macro:

Pull:cast Radiant Sporescast Withering Vine

DPS: cast Vile Spores

Heal: cast Vile Spores

The two latter macros are not necessary at this point, but eventually you'll get abilities with cooldowns that you'll want to place into them (Ruin for DPS, Bloom for Heal). When your macros are done, place them on your first action bar with Pull in the first spot (bound to Numpad 1), DPS in the second spot (bound to Numpad 2), and Heal in the third spot (bound to Numpad 3).

Step 6: On your cleric, create 3 macros. The first will be called Pull. The second will be called DPS. The third will be called Heal. As a level 1 Warden / Purifier / Druid, you'll use the following commands inside each macro:

Pull: cast Symbol of the Torch

DPS: cast Waterjet

Heal: cast Overflowing Renewal

Again, none of these macros are necessary yet, but you might later add some abilities with cooldowns.

When your macros are done, place them on your first action bar with Pull in the first spot (bound to Numpad 1), DPS in the second spot (bound to Numpad 2), and Heal in the third spot (bound to Numpad 3).

Step 7: Test everything out by creating your group (inviting in the correct order and accepting in the correct order), making everyone follow (alt-D), finding and targeting an enemy, making everyone assist (alt-A), hitting 1 to make them activate the pull macro, then spamming 2 or 3 to have them go through their DPS or Heal rotations, respectively. When I first started, I used the DPS rotation for normal questing and the Heal rotation for the first instance.

Last edited by Jeran on Mon Jun 17, 2013 8:47 am, edited 4 times in total.

1) Having trouble with /follow breaking your cast time / channeled abilities? Build a movement into your Pull rotation by going to your RIFT Rogue, RIFT Mage, and RIFT Cleric key maps and adding a step that causes them to move before using any of their abilties. Create a new step, then create a new do mapped key action, target the current window, use the non-combat key map, and use the flying v formation mapped key. It doesn't actually put them in the formation, but it does break follow.

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2) Add more abilities to your macros. For example, as you gain levels, change your rogue Build macro to include Empowered Shot, or change your Finish macro to include Rapid Fire Shot followed by Deadeye Shot (which replaces Hasted Shot as the default).

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3) Build actual timed rotations within ISBoxer. For example, for your Rogue, you know that Empowered Shot has a 10s cooldown. So instead of doing 5x Builder, 1x finisher in your DPS rotation, you could do 1x Empowered Shot, 3x Swift Shot, 1x Finisher, 5x Swift Shot, 1x Finisher. 10 seconds should elapse before you come back to Empowered Shot, so it will be ready to go again. You're mixing calls to individual abilities (Empowered Shot, Swift Shot) with calls to a macro (Finish), but it will still work just fine.

It can also be nice for your casters. Here's an example of a 15 second rotation for a low level Chloromancer.

If you want to start at the beginning of the rotation in every fight, go to the advanced tab and set the rotation to Reset to Step 1 after 5.0 seconds from the last Hotkey press. NOT THE FIRST HOTKEY PRESS, or you'll spend an hour (argh) wonder why your warrior never uses his finisher.

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4) Add more mapped keys to your RIFT Virtual Combat, RIFT Combat Hotkeys, and RIFT (class-specific) key maps. For example, maybe you want 4 to be “Taunt”, 5 to be “Interrupt”, and 6 to be “Panic Mode”. You should be able to pull this off by repeating the above steps – you'll create a key map in Virtual Combat, in Rift Combat, and then in each of the Rift (class) key maps, repeating the same steps for each that you made above. It gets a lot faster as you get more practiced with ISBoxer! One of the default wizard settings that I did not use in this tutorial gives you a good idea of some available options:

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5) Want to be able to join public quests and warfronts and still have functioning follow and assist macros? Follow these instructions!

1. Create an extra side action bar and set F10, F11, F12 (do not include a shift, alt, or control modifier on any of these!) and alt-shift-2 as key bindings on each of your characters. You probably have alt-shift-2 already set up for your Interact macro, and all I did here was move it down a couple spots.

2. Create the following macros on each of your characters, replacing character# with the names of your characters in the proper order, and then place the macros on the action bars and key bindings that you just created.

3. In the ISBoxer Toolkit, select Non-combat under Key Maps in the top left window. In the bottom left window, right click on Mapped Keys and select New Mapped Key. Rename the new mapped key to Invite. Then select the first (still empty) step under Invite. In the bottom right window, create a New Keystroke Action. Set the target to Window:Current and the key combination to F10.

4. In the ISBoxer Toolkit, select Non-combat under Key Maps in the top left window. In the bottom left window, right click on Mapped Keys and select New Mapped Key. Rename the new mapped key to FTL Follow Me. Then select Advanced, under FTL Follow Me, and turn World of Warcraft: Add FTL Modifiers to Keystrokes to On. Then select the first (still empty) step under FTL Follow Me. In the bottom right window, create a New Keystroke Action. Set the target to Window:All w/o Current and the key combination to F11.

5. In the ISBoxer Toolkit, select Non-combat under Key Maps in the top left window. In the bottom left window, right click on Mapped Keys and select New Mapped Key. Rename the new mapped key to FTL Assist Me. Then select Advanced, under FTL Assist Me, and turn World of Warcraft: Add FTL Modifiers to Keystrokes to On. Then select the first (still empty) step under FTL Assist Me. In the bottom right window, create a New Keystroke Action. Set the target to Window:All w/o Current and the key combination to F12. No image included here because it's the same exact thing as in step 4 above.

6. In the top left window, select RIFT Combat Hotkeys. Change all of the actions that refer to your Assist Me mapped key to refer to your new FTL Assist Me mapped key.

The repeater region will be placed over an action bar that will be identical for each character and will contain abilities like mounting, recalling, buffs, and so on. This will save you from having to activate mouse broadcasting, or from going to each window individually, or from setting up a separate hotkey for these abilities within ISBoxer (besides, we already know how to do this from previous parts of this tutorial!). The first click bar will allow you to cast heals on all of your characters from any of your windows. The second click bar will allow you to use abilities with longer cooldowns from all of your characters, and toggle things like the Mage's charge abilities, from any of your windows.

Repeater Region – Shared Action Bar

1. Make an identical action bar on all of your characters. In this case, the keybindings for the action bar are control-alt-Numpad 1 though 9 (and then Numpad – and Numpad +), though you don't actually need there to be any keybindings for this to work.

2. Load up your characters and, in your main window, press control-shift-alt-G to bring up the ISBoxer Control Panel. Then select the repeater regions tab. For Name, enter “Shared Action Bar”. For Target, select all other. Then click Add.

3. Position the repeater region over your action bar, click Sync, then click Save as (Auto). The repeater region should now be in the same position in all of your windows and will load automagically when you launch your team from Innerspace.

4. Press control-shift-alt-G to close the ISBoxer Control Panel. Then test your action bar to make sure that clicking on a button (ex: your mount) in any window causes all the other windows to also receive that button press (ex: start mounting / dismount). If you want to change any of the icons on your new hotbar, the mouse action will be repeated to all of your screens, so either make sure that the action you're taking won't cause any problems or move the repeated before you make changes and put it back after you make changes (control-alt-shift-G, drag it out of the way, make your changes, put it back afterwards, sync and save, control-alt-shift-G).

Click Bar – Heals For Everyone

Will do when I figure out a good way to do it that I can explain coherently.

Click Bar – Cooldown and Toggle Manager

Will do when I figure out a good way to do it that I can explain coherently.

Last edited by Jeran on Tue Jun 18, 2013 3:17 pm, edited 14 times in total.

If you've already used this tutorial in the past day and have had issues with targeting of your heal spells, please see Part 2, Step 17 for an updated image of the settings window. I had a duplicate image in there of the action bar tab; there is now an image of the combat tab as well.

Image links have also been made less terrible and more viewable - thanks to Kaische for the advice on how to do it!